We’re still waiting to hear if there will be a season three of The Umbrella Academy, but while you wait, there are plenty of other quirky sci-fi shows to keep you busy! All the things you love about the show – a ragtag groups of misfits, superpowers that aren’t totally controlled, time travel, and other strange things – can be found in other stories, ranging from oddball comedies to dark dramas and everything in between. No matter which streaming platform you prefer, there’s definitely something available for you to start watching tonight! Keep reading for our picks of the best shows you can watch to fill the days until The Umbrella Academy returns.
Everett Collection / Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Boys
The Umbrella Academy isn’t quite your typical “superhero” show, as it’s packed with characters who are deeply messed up and have unconventional methods and coping mechanisms. For an even grittier, more grown-up take, look no further than The Boys, which pits a group of PR-polished superheroes with a dark agenda against rough-and-tumble vigilantes.
Watch The Boys on Amazon Prime.
Everett Collection / Alfonso Bresciani
Cloak & Dagger
Although they’re not raised as siblings like The Umbrella Academy‘s Hargreeves family, the title heroes of Cloak & Dagger quickly realize that they’re much stronger together. As a team, they try to save the world (or at least their little corner of it) while also trying to unravel the mysterious origins of their powers and why they’re so closely linked.
Watch Cloak & Dagger on Hulu.
Everett Collection / Robert Falconer
Legends of Tomorrow
If you think the Hargreeves family on The Umbrella Academy is a bunch of misfits, you definitely need to meet the Legends. The premise is delightfully tongue in cheek: a revolving cast of second-tier superheroes travel through time to pursue baddies and fix anomalies, often making more messes than they clean up while solving mysteries of their own powers and pasts.
Watch Legends of Tomorrow on Netflix.
Everett Collection / Sci-Fi Channel/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Magicians
Just like The Umbrella Academy, The Magicians focuses on a group of supernaturally gifted young adults – some with the potential for deadly misuse of their powers – who really don’t get along at first, but have to team up against a much bigger evil. Think of it as a darkly humorous wizarding grad school plus the dark side of Narnia, and you’ve got a good picture.
Watch The Magicians on Netflix.
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Orphan Black
The “siblings” on The Umbrella Academy spend a lot of time trying to figure out how and why they’re linked, and that’s the central premise of Orphan Black, too. A group of very different women realize that they’re all clones of each other, and they slowly band together to find more clones and to unravel the conspiracy that affects them all.
Watch Orphan Black on Amazon Prime.
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Marvel's Runaways
A group of teenagers with complicated feelings about their parental figures team up to prevent the worst from happening. Unlike on The Umbrella Academy, they weren’t raised together; instead, this Marvel spin-off tackles the “found family” trope as these superheroes in the making figure out their powers and deal with complicated parental relationships and resentment.
Watch Marvel’s Runaways on Hulu.
Everett Collection / Murray Close/Netflix
Sense8
The heroes of The Umbrella Academy are bonded through a strange supernatural occurrence, all being born on the same day to mothers who weren’t even pregnant before. Sense8 takes that concept and runs with it, following a group of strangers who discover that they are psychically and emotionally linked, aka “sensates.”
Watch Sense8 on Netflix.
Everett Collection / John Medland
Shadowhunters
Like The Umbrella Academy, Shadowhunters follows a group of people with supernatural abilities who are fighting against an impending apocalypse. Shadowhunters, however, takes things to a biblical level (literally): the Shadowhunters get their powers from angels, and the apocalypse they’re fighting is literally from hell itself.
Watch Shadowhunters on Hulu.
Everett Collection / Netflix
Stranger Things
A family-tight group of young people rallies together to fight a mysterious evil, with one unusual girl standing out from all the rest. It’s the premise of The Umbrella Academy, but it’s also Stranger Things, Neflix’s retro sci-fi/horror hit that follows a superpowered tweenage girl and her band of friends as they battle a horror invading from a dark dimension.
Watch Stranger Things on Netflix.
Everett Collection / Colleen Hayes
Timeless
While no actual superpowers are in play in this time-travel drama, its basic premise actually shares some major things with The Umbrella Academy. Just as Number Five’s time-travel pursuits and evasion of futuristic agents sets the plot in motion for the Hargreeves siblings, Timeless centers on a modern team of experts hopping through time in hopes of stopping a morally ambiguous “terrorist,” as well as a downright terrifying organization trying to rewrite history.
Watch Timeless on Hulu.
Everett Collection / Michelle Faye
Wynonna Earp
The Umbrella Academy, like Wynonna Earp, is based on a comic book series that’s not quite your usual superheroes/supervillains style. Instead, the show follows a woman who returns to her hometown to track down supernatural “revenants” and literal demons, with the help of her most trusted friends.
Watch Wynonna Earp on Netflix.
